ABC's bias on display for all to see

But this week, the first of the federal election campaign, some have questioned the way Kerry O'Brien -- one of the long-serving ABC old guard -- has handled two major interviews. O'Brien interviewed Julia Gillard on day three of the campaign. He did not ask a single question about Building the Education Revolution, the multi-billion-dollar scheme to upgrade the nation's schools that has been plagued by waste and rorts, despite the fact that Gillard, before she became Prime Minister, was the education minister. He did not ask about the failed home insulation scheme, either. O'Brien did ask about the failed East Timor solution, putting the question this way: "You seemed to show inexperience in the way you handled your attempt to persuade East Timor to embrace a regional refugee centre for asylum-seekers. How do you persuade Australians that you're a safe pair of hands on all those very tricky foreign policy issues?" You read the full article from The Australian here. I know it's from 1996, but this recollection by a former ABC staffer does beautifully sum it all up: "The reality is different. ABC newsrooms get very nervous when the Liberal Party looks a winning chance and they get angry when Liberal governments retain power. "One classic example was the clarion call of 1996 when a flustered senior current affairs producer exhorted the troops to get stuck into the Libs because, 'we could lose this thing . . . Keating could lose'. "Programs such as The 7.30 Report are built on a Labor culture of ALP for the workers (including struggling journos), and Kerry O'Brien didn't disappoint when he gave honeymooning PM Julia Gillard a nice run on Monday night." And no children, this is not excusable because it 'balances' a pro-Coalition bias in the commercial media. For one thing, the people who make the news there are by and large just as Left-wing and "progressive" as their fellow journalists at the ABC. Anyone who doesn't think this bias shows in the commercial media is, to not put too fine a point on it, an idiot. Either that or they don't watch the commercial channels and don't read newspapers. The Fairfax media, publishers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, is overwhelmingly left of centre in its orientation. Plus, some of the most nakedly anti-Coalition pieces I have seen on TV have been on the commercial channels. As I say, the world-view of most journalists is left of centre and it shows.

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